


Pre-War Smile

by InspectorGadget



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: F/M, It's a rambling dabble, Obsession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-15 14:20:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8059657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InspectorGadget/pseuds/InspectorGadget
Summary: She looks like his mother.





	

**Author's Note:**

> It's not suppose to make sense. I did it as practice.

She has a pre-war smile; the type of signature one would expect from those girls in propaganda postures, saluting their soldiers – enticing their draft and their hearts into a meaningless war. Chaostrophic in proportions, about as humble as a rad storm, does this woman emerge from the fog in the ventilations and pipes, catching sea-fairing eyes in the dim lighting of the tunnels: haunting, predatory fabricated in innocence, casting shadows on a rounded face, illuminated by her subtle personality. She’s a fair creature, ashen, red clashing with white and blue, and sunshine hair tied up – far too bright to be crafted by his imagination, far too foreign to be found in his company. Curious – so damn curious that it could break a man’s heart.

Lucky for Pickman, he had four more stored away in a cooler.

Her boots hit the gravel, a dandy canine follows her like a haunted shadow – cautious is the beast when Pickman extended his bloodstained hand out towards his mistress. A charming gesture, easily placed as niceties while he was surrounded with the corpses of those who sought out revenge; he didn’t hold it against the men, they’ll make for a grand symmetrical piece, perhaps he’ll hide their eyes behind the glass within a frame – perhaps he’ll dedicate it to his new friend who looked reluctant. Yes. That sounded like a brilliant idea; a test of surrealism, dedicated to the woman in a blue vault suit with blue eyes and hands as red as his.

“That was close, thank you,” his mother always taught him to be kind to pretty women, to always say _thank you_ and _have a lovely day,_ and to never mind the other children in the settlement who found him queer and strange – who found fear in his looming eyes and causal talk – calling him sadistic.  

It was his mother who taught him to smile and to find joy in those who complied – conveying politeness in such a desolate world was a treat. And, perhaps, his new friend was exposed to those who wronged her – she stood there, looking at his hand, hesitantly extending hers. Internal conflict, human psychology could be a marvelous subject – for it was the artist who understood the horrors of the world: painting portraits of the devil, depicting a Witches’ Sabbath, applying truth to the paper.

“Those people deserved worse than death,” his words play off the tongue, rolling and confident. He demoralized the human existences and was highly amused to the shift in her character from hero to horribly bewitch. Her hand is soft like her soul, naïve and bright. There’s a tremor in her grasp, giving him reason to curl his fingers in tighter – making up for her lack in friendliness. No. He knows this girl. Pictured her from the static in the radio and the mumbling of a shy young man over the intercom, detailing her misfortune of a missing son. The poor dear. No. This girl is rather infamous in the Commonwealth – he was lucky enough she graced him. That vault suit holds tragedy in the seams.

“Are you okay? What did they want from you,” her voice is soft – so damn soft that it barely echoes off the emptiness of the caverns; she has to clear her throat, painted with embarrassment, or plagued with fear. Her inquiry in endearing, leaving Pickman with a hollow-point and permanent smile. There were never enough allegories for him to define her.

To such a question, Pickman thought back on his mother again: fair faced like the vault dweller, sunshine hair and blue eyes. If his own mother acquired that pre-war smile, then he would find them striking in resemblance. But that was the oddity to their world, an acquired taste of reality that seemed to be constantly bleeding – like his mother. He remembers the visual effect of Raiders parading out from the woods and surrounding their cabin – how the other settlers ignored his mother’s screams of terror, how he held his breath while he hid under the cabinet on his mother’s orders.

He recollects on how they removed her clothing and bit the side of her breast, how they wrapped their dirty fingers around her slender neck and made her heave for her life. And she bled the most beautiful ruby red – soaked on the floorboards, under the weight of one of those monsters who sought to devour and consume. And, still, the settlers ignored her hollow pleas – cowering and covering their own like startled cattle. They say time can never hurt you, that time serves to heal – but so does picking up a knife and pulling back the skin from bone. After all, he loved his paint to still feel warm under his fingernails.

“You’re kind to ask. Well, a small disagreement,” there’s morbid humor in his tone, a hushed chuckle warmed in his cold chest. He holds her hand in his, turning over the dainty limb, and she’s too fear-stricken to completely pull away. But she doesn’t need to fear him, he doesn’t need to distort her features to fit his fantasy – she’s perfected by nature, weathered in wisdom. His canvases didn’t deserve to be bathed in her blood. Still, she carefully watches him like a wary beast, willing to strike on an ill-move. “They objected to my hobby of collecting their heads. Let me repay you.”

Heads. He reflects on the first head he pulled from the shoulders of a Raider; his craftsmanship was sloppy, an amateur motive, but all great artists start as such. The eyes lulled with the tilt of his hand, blood poured from the sink, hands greedy and warm and ravishing with the flesh. The smell of iron drums him in the act of his causal love affair with madness, and he spoke to the head – mothered it as such, whispering his dreams about his poor mother left on the floorboards of his childhood home – mouth wide open and forever telling, missing the soft hums of her singing to him and her lighthearted advice.

The head spoke to him, too. Told him to continue, told him to strive and eliminate; the head was rather persuasive, much smarter without its torso clouding its thoughts and its heart that beats under the ribcage; sometimes he can hear the heart – late at night, under the floorboards – all around him and within the consuming darkness. And, sometimes, he swears he can hear the pace of footsteps outside his bedroom door – pacing and aimlessly wandering within a decaying building littered with the scars of a bygone war.

He knows he can hear the voice of his mother in all these oddities and anomalies; for he knows there is no _real_ him, only an illusion - an entity. But he can feel the hand in his, tucked away with care, and smeared with transgressions.

He sends her away with his knife, and his fond calling of, “ _See you later, Killer.”_

For they are all bound to die.

This marks his devotion to the woman, bound by the drum of murderous intentions and whispering thoughts.

He'll see her again. 


End file.
